I woke up at 6 and tried in earnest to go back to sleep, trying in earnest perhaps being most of the problem, and so instead spent the next two hours reading Gilead. I have a huge assignment due on Tuesday and if I don’t start today there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (mine) on Monday night. So I will start. Soon.
There are a number of gifted storytellers in my family and Thanksgiving is a prime occasion to enjoy their accounts of the adventures and misphaps of old. That said, I give you my rendering of Turkeys are the dumbest animals that God ever created as told by my Aunt Karine.
“We started with 3 ducks. We bought them for the kids at Easter. They were cute. There were only 3 of them. Then people began giving us stray chickens, a few guinea fowl, geese. Then some herons started freeloading off us, and then a few wild geese caught onto that idea as well. And then, then, there were the turkeys. 2o or so of them.
Every morning at sunrise the whole noisy lot of them would wake up and the lead bird (a female duck) would push and nip and poke everyone into pecking order and off they would march across the yard and into the pond. Turkeys, however, don’t swim. They don’t have very good memories either, and so every morning the turkeys would get nipped into line and follow the parade thinking, “Oh, we’re going for a walk. I wonder where we’re going?” By November, there were only two left: Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I had been going out there in my nightgown and boots most mornings to pull the stupid things out of the 6 inches of water they were managing to drown themselves in. Well now it was November and I was 8 months pregnant with Donna and I stood at the kitchen window watching the procession and I thought, “I am not going out there. They are just going to drown.” And they walked right on in and started flailing and screeching and I walked away from the window because the phone rang. My neighbor was calling in a state of panic to tell me the turkeys were drowning and that I had to get out there quick. Damn turkeys.”
I didn’t do this justice. You should come have dessert with us next year and hear it for yourself.
